it would have made no difference. The old
man's cornfields were fattened by the blood of his sheep, and he would
give no quarter. And the blood of our countrymen has been poured out at
the shrine of the demon Intemperance, and we must give none. Talk we of
alcohol as a friend! As well may a mother praise the crocodile which has
devoured her offspring.

Look, my countrymen, at the ravages of intemperance. Fix your eye on its
waste of property.

At the lowest calculation, it has annually despoiled us of a hundred
millions of dollars--of thirty millions for an article which is nothing
worth, and seventy or eighty millions more to compensate for the
mischiefs that article has done--money enough to accomplish all that the
warmest patriot could wish for his country, and to fill, in a short
period, the world with Bibles and a preached Gospel. What farmer would
not be roused, should a wild beast come once a year into his borders and
destroy the best cow in his farmyard? But 6-1/4 cents a day for ardent
spirit wastes $22 81 cents a year, and in 40 years nearly $1,000, which
is a thousand times as much as scores of drunkards are worth at their
burial.

See the pauperism it has produced. We have sung of our goodly heritage,
and foreign nations have disgorged their exuberant population that they
might freely subsist in this land of plenty. But in this granary of the
world are everywhere seen houses without windows, fields without
tillage, barns without roofs, children without clothing, and
penitentiaries and almshouses filled to overflowing; and a traveller
might write--BEGGARS MADE HERE. We are groaning under our pauperism, and
talking of taxes, and hard times, and no trade; but intemperance has
stalked through our land and devoured our substance. It has entered the
houses of our unsuspecting inhabitants as a friend, and taken the food
from their tables, and the clothing from their beds, and the fuel from
their fire, and turned their lands over to others, and drove them from
their dwellings to subsist on beggary and crime, or drag out a miserable
existence in penitentiaries and almshouses. Two-thirds, or 150,000 of
the wretched tenants of these abodes of poverty in the United States,
were reduced by intemperance. So themselves confess. It was rum, brandy,
and whiskey, that did it. And the Prison Discipline report tells of
50,000 cases of imprisonment for debt annually in the United States, in
consequence of the use of ardent s